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hadn’t moved since the day before.
    It felt odd creeping around in her father’s private meeting room while he and his nobles were there, but she needed one of the maps kept rolled up on a row of narrow shelves. Finding the map of Treecrest and the surrounding kingdoms, Annie kissed her father on the cheek, something he never would have allowed when he was awake. He woke only briefly at her touch, but not enough to know that she was there.
    The king was already snoring again when she pulled the tapestry away from the wall and reached for the latch of the hidden door. The fabric was heavy against her back as she slipped behind it and entered the secret passage that only members of the royal family knew existed. Wrinkling her nose at the musty smell, she stepped onto the landing and pulled the door closed behind her. It was dark inside the passage, but she’d been this way before. With the flint she’d brought with her clutched tightly inher hand, Annie patted the rough wall beside her until she found one of the torches kept for emergencies. She used the flint to light the torch, and descended the circular stairway that led down past the lower floors and through the center of the dungeon. Closed off from everything around it, the stairwell had little ventilation and the air felt damp and heavy.
    After what seemed like forever, she reached the last step and the long, low tunnel that led out of the castle. Years before, a magic spell had been placed on the tunnel to keep it intact; Annie didn’t dare linger for fear that her lack of magic might make the tunnel unsound. She walked holding the torch in front of her, relieved that she could no longer hear either the tinkling of the chimes or the collective breathing of the sleepers in the castle.
    When the floor began to angle up, she hurried, anxious to get out of the tunnel. She finally emerged into a small cave and pushed aside the undergrowth that hid it from view of anyone passing by in the forest. Stepping out of the cave, she raised her face to the early-morning light filtering through the leaves overhead and paused to listen to the songs of birds, an ordinary sound that she’d missed while in the sleeping castle.
    It occurred to her that she should go back and tell the townspeople what had happened to the king. Perhaps someone there could help her find the closest patrol or even go fetch Digby. She shouldered her satchel and tried to get her bearings. Knowing that the tunnel led straightfrom the castle, Annie figured out from the direction of the cave which way she’d have to go to reach the road.
    She was picking her way through the bracken and fallen twigs when she heard voices up ahead and smelled bacon cooking. Although she was about to call out to them, she pressed her lips closed when she heard the tone of their voices. She drew closer, slipping as quietly as she could from tree to tree so they wouldn’t see her, until she was within a stone’s throw of a makeshift campsite. A wagon was parked between her and the men, and she recognized it from the shape of the seat and the faded paint on the side as the one that had been used to deliver the trunk.
    There were three men at the campsite, two of them sitting beside a smoking fire while a third held a pan of sizzling bacon over the flames. Roughly dressed and unshaven, they looked and sounded like the vagabonds she had feared would take advantage of her kingdom’s helplessness.
    “No one’s seen that princess on the battlements yet today. What do you suppose she’s doing in there?” said one of the men.
    “Doesn’t matter as long as she doesn’t get out,” replied the cook.
    “How could she?” said the third man. “No one can get past those stinkin’ roses. Soon as you hack ’em out, they grow back again. Can’t go a foot without those things wrapping around you and tearing at your fleshy parts.”
    “Fenley’s never going to stop complaining about those thorns.”
    “Shaddup, Twitch! You’ll